There was a time when the estuary was a wide deep harbor, and really a part of Liverpool Bay, and great ships from all over the world came into it and sailed up to Chester, which in those days was a famous port.  But as years passed the sands, loosened by floods and carried down by the river current, choked and blocked the harbor, and before Grenfell was born it had become so shallow that only fishing vessels and small craft could use it.

Parkgate is on the northern side of the River Dee.  On the southern side and beyond the Sands of Dee, rise the green hills of Wales, melting away into blue mysterious distance.  Near as Wales is the people over there speak a different tongue from the English, and to young Grenfell and his companions it was a strange and foreign land and the people a strange and mysterious people.  We have most of us, in our young days perhaps, thought that all Welshmen were like Taffy, of whom Mother Goose sings: 

    “Taffy was a Welshman, Taffy was a thief,
    Taffy came to my house and stole a piece of beef;
    I went to Taffy’s house, Taffy wasn’t home,
    Taffy came to my house and stole a marrow bone;
    I went to Taffy’s house, Taffy was in bed,
    I took the marrow-bone, and beat about his head.”

But it was Grenfell’s privilege, living so near, to make little visits over into Wales, and he early had an opportunity to learn that Taffy was not in the least like Welshmen.  He found them fine, honest, kind-hearted folk, with no more Taffys among them than there are among the English or Americans.  The great Lloyd George, perhaps the greatest of living statesmen, is a Welshman, and by him and not by Taffy, we are now measuring the worth of this people who were the near neighbors of Grenfell in his young days.

Mostyn House, where Grenfell lived, overlooked the estuary.  From the windows of his father’s house he could see the fishing smacks going out upon the great adventurous sea and coming back laden with fish.

Living by the sea where he heard the roar of the breakers and every day smelled the good salt breath of the ocean, it was natural that he should love it, and to learn, almost as soon as he could run about, to row and sail a boat, and to swim and take part in all sorts of water sports.  Time and again he went with the fishermen and spent the night and the day with them out upon the sea.  This is why it was fortunate that he was born at Parkgate, for his life there as a boy trained him to meet adventures fearlessly and prepared him for the later years which were destined to be years of adventure.

Far up the river, wide marshes reached; and over these marshes, and the Sands of Dee, Grenfell roamed at will.  His father and mother were usually away during the long holidays when school was closed, and he and his brothers were left at these times with a vast deal of freedom to do as they pleased and seek the adventure that every boy loves, and on the sands and in the marshes there was always adventure enough to be found.